AIDS hope

News this week that a child born with the virus that causes AIDS has been “functionally cured” after receiving very early drug treatment is cause for additional hope in the battle against the disease.

Worcester can also be proud that the research team involved in this case includes Dr. Katherine F. Luzuriaga, a professor and immunologist at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.

The news, however, is being greeted with caution, as well, and for good reason.

While the child, now two-and-a-half and living in Mississippi, appears to be healthy and in long-term remission, the human immunodeficiency virus has long presented researchers with huge challenges. It is among the most opportunistic viruses known, and it has taken decades for medical science to develop effective therapies.

Several experts, including those involved in this case, are cautioning that we simply cannot know what the long-term prognosis is, and whether HIV — which is still detectable in this child — might someday awaken. The case is remarkable because the child was treated within 30 hours of birth, and drug therapy was later stopped, without the subsequent appearance of AIDS.

Some 34 million people worldwide are infected with HIV. With early treatment, AIDS can now be controlled, and life expectancy has improved markedly from the early days of the pandemic. But treatment is expensive and many with AIDS lack access to the therapies they need.

Those on the frontiers of science will continue to investigate HIV/AIDS, and with time will produce still more remarkable advances and therapies against a disease that has killed an estimated 30 million people worldwide since being identified in 1981. But education and prevention remain the most effective weapons on the front lines of this struggle.